1. Technical Field
The present invention relates, in general, to an improved graphical user interface method and system. In particular, the present invention relates to an improved graphical user interface method and system to be utilized with voice input. More specifically, the present invention relates to an improved graphical user interface method and system to be utilized with voice input, and which removes a voice activated commands dialog box when a voice input system is not active.
2. Background
A graphical user interface is a type of display format that enables a user to choose commands, start programs, and see lists of files and other options by pointing to pictorial representations and lists of menu items on a computer display screen. Graphical user interface environments rely on icons, which are small graphic images displayed on a computer display screen, to represent graphical objects that can be manipulated by a user.
For application program users, a graphical user interface offers an environment that can handle direct interaction with the computer. Such environments free the application program user to concentrate on a given application without becoming entangled in the details of a screen display or keyboard input. A graphical user interface also enables programmers to create programs to handle frequently performed tasks, such as saving a data file. The interface itself provides standard controlling mechanisms such as windows and dialog boxes.
Traditionally, these controlling mechanisms have been activated by either a keyboard or a pointing device such as a mouse. A mouse is a commonly used pointing device, containing one or more buttons, that allows a user to interact with a product or operating environment such as a graphical user interface. The mouse is used to position a cursor within the graphical user interface, and then used to activate the control mechanisms by dragging or clicking on icons. Thus, the graphical user interface utilizes such dragging and clicking operations to effect program control and input that prior to such graphical user interfaces required a great deal of user keyboard input.
Relatively recently, advances in speech recognition technology have made it possible to perform many of the functions traditionally done via mouse and keyboard input by voice input. In order to provide such voice input control, a user typically speaks into a microphone and "trains" a computing system to recognize a list of commands. Once the computing system has been so trained, the user can then control the graphical user interface via voice input.
In order to assist a user utilizing voice input, it has become standard within the industry to display a dialog box within a graphical user interface to remind the user what commands his or her computer has been "trained" to recognize. This dialog box can be quite large and can consume a large amount of surface area within the graphical user interface display.
While such voice input has proven to be exceedingly useful for many applications (such as dictation), there are still instances where mouse/keyboard input is preferred (such as with a drawing program). Consequently, it is not unusual for a user to switch back and forth between voice input and mouse/keyboard input.
As has been stated, the dialog box showing the commands which the computing system has been trained to recognize can be quite large. It is common to set the default of a computing system such that the dialog box showing the available voice activated commands remains "on top" of the other objects within the graphical user interface (that is, the dialog box is always the foremost box displayed within the graphical user interface). This situation becomes problematic when the user desires to go from voice input to mouse/keyboard input in that the dialog box, which is no longer needed, continues to remain "on top" of all other objects within the graphical user interface.
In light of the foregoing, it is clear that a need exists for a method and system which removes the voice activated commands dialog box from the graphical user interface when the voice activated commands dialog box is not needed.